If this is your first visit, be sure to
check out the FAQ by clicking the
link above. You may have to register
before you can post: click the register link above to proceed. To start viewing messages,
select the forum that you want to visit from the selection below.

Huma Mian has been identified as an American citizen who graduated from Colorado University and is the wife of Faisal Shazhad. She is now in Pakistan, where authorities have detained her father.

A boy looks through the main gate of the ancestral home of the family of Faisal Shahzad, owned by the family of New York City's Times Square bombing suspect Faisal Shahzad, in his native village of Mohib Banda, Pakistan, Wednesday.

By Issam Ahmed, Correspondent / May 5, 2010

Lahore, Pakistan
Pakistani authorities have arrested several members of the family of Times Square bomber Faisal Shahzad, including the father of his wife, Huma Mian.

News reports in the US initially suggested a possible Colorado connection between Shahzad’s wife, Huma Mian, and Najibullah Zazi, an Afghan national who pleaded guilty to a foiled New York subway attack. But attention in Pakistan has turned to a small, peaceful village on the outskirts of Peshawar where Mr. Shahzad grew up.

Residents in Mohib Banda, population 10,000, described Shahzad’s family as well respected and middle class in interviews given to Pakistani media, while some suggest he has been framed.

“The entire family is highly educated and enlightened. The villagers don’t believe that Shahzad could act in such a manner,” Kifayatullah Khan, a lawyer, told Pakistan’s Dawn newspaper.

Part of this disbelief may stem from Shahzad’s privileged background as the son of a retired Pakistan Air Force vice air marshal.

A senior Air Force officer told the Monitor that Shahzad’s father, Baharul Haq, is “worried and depressed” and has left his home in a posh area of Peshawar to avoid the media. “If his son has done something wrong, it is nothing to do with the PAF [Pakistan Air Force]. We have no concerns with that boy – he is a civilian and a US citizen.”

Shahzad’s wife, Huma Mian, and their two young children, meanwhile, are believed to currently be in Pakistan. Fox News reported Tuesday that Mian has relatives listed at several addresses in Aurora, Colo. – the same town Afghan national Najibullah Zazi and relatives lived in between January 2009 and July 31, 2009. Attorney General General Eric Holder told a press conference: “I don't have any basis to believe at least at this point that there's any connection between the two.”

Huma Mian's father detained
The Dawn newspaper reports that Shahzad's father-in-law, Iftikhar Mian, was picked up by Pakistan intelligence agents in Karachi Wednesday. US and Pakistani media report that Shahzad moved his family to Karachi in 2009.

On Oct. 20, 2008, he reported to US authorities his marriage to a woman he identified as Huma Asif Mian, an American citizen.

Colorado University officials confirm that Huma Asif Mian attended the university in Boulder from 2000-2004 and graduated with a degree in accounting. But she appears to have left Colorado in 2005.